I have prepared some small copies of scans of the same photo made with my flat bed scanner and my negative/slide scanner.
This scan is from a 180×130mm (7×5”) print done by Kodak. It’s from an area of the print approximately 107×147mm (4.2×5.8”). The scan was made at 300dpi and then scaled down.
This scan is from the 35mm negative from which the print was made. It was scanned at 2700dpi and then scaled down.
Apart from anything else notice the lack of detail in the background of the scan made from the print. It wasn’t there in the print and so can’t possibly be there in the scan. The detail was there on the negative though and by playing around with the scanner settings I was able to bring it out. To my eye the colours are better on the negative scan too although the print scan is actually a pretty good representation of the original print. It has to be admitted though that my flatbed scanner is not the best available.
Here are some details from the scans. The print was re-scanned at 480dpi for this so that the final image size is the same as that from the negative.
This scan is from a 180×130mm (7×5”) print done by Kodak. It’s from an area of the print approximately 15mm wide. The scan was made at 480dpi
This scan is from the 35mm negative from which the print was made. The scan was made at 2700dpi from an area of the negative only about 2.7mm wide.
As you can see the negative scan is rather sharper than the print scan. To be fair, if the print had been larger the detail would have been better. How many of us have large prints to scan though?
